


we'll be lucky if we ever see the sun

by Sharkchimedes



Series: Shark's AU Roulette [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Allusions to canon-typical violence, Canon-typical language, Gen, Pacific Rim AU, some brief/vague discussion of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24435118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharkchimedes/pseuds/Sharkchimedes
Summary: In another world, Peter never left earth. But that didn't stop the aliens from finding him anyway. These are just a lot bigger. And the people he grew up around are somehow just as weird.Or: a few scenes from a Pacific Rim!AU.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Shark's AU Roulette [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764658
Kudos: 4





	we'll be lucky if we ever see the sun

**Author's Note:**

> this particular little wip has been hanging out in my drive for several years, and though i'm not sure i'll ever add more to it, i felt like it had enough in it to warrant posting it, so here it is! i may eventually come back to it and add more bits but who knows.
> 
> also for a slight amount of clarification: stakar was already using they/them pronouns before the accident that comes up in the past-tense in this fic, and just changed their name to starhawk after that incident occurred.

“You can’t be serious.” Martinex squinted at the time-books. “You sent him to a  _ bone-town _ ?”

Starhawk, a few yards away by the communications console and halfway through eating a mess hall sandwich, shrugged. “I did.”

“Meredith is gonna kill you.” He shook his head, closing the books and turning to look at Starhawk. “You know that, right? She’s gonna  _ kill _ you.”

They looked slightly affronted at the suggestion, putting down the sandwich and standing to cross the floor over to Martinex. “She asked me to convince Peter to give up on ranger training. Sending him on a requisition to a bone-town seems like the easiest way to convince him.” 

“And Knowhere of all places.” Martinex rolled his eyes. Starhawk, for all the smarts they had, tended to overlook the little details that mattered to other people in the long run. Such as Knowhere being the last place anyone would want their kid to go, regardless of working on convincing them to drop out of the PPDC’s ranger training program. “Alright, so when Merry comes up here ready to tie you to one of the m-class choppers like a hood ornament,  _ I _ am not gonna try and rescue you.”

“Knowhere isn’t the worst of them,” Starhawk insisted, “And it’s the closest. It'll change Peter's mind, and she will thank me."

“And it’s got one of our dealers who’s poached several  _ other _ corps wanna-bes into the black market game.” Martinex shook his head. “Your funeral.”

“You’ll see, he’ll come back within a day without the items K-S wanted, and then that will be the end of it.” 

Of course, that wasn't the end of it, because Peter was a Quill, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

* * *

And there was luckily no funeral for Starhawk, but Martinex kept his bunk door locked just in case any angry j-tech engineers came running in with a wrench. 

* * *

"Hey, T'Naga- do we have any records of drift abnormalities?" Peter asked. 

The man froze and looked startled, before quickly-  _ too quickly _ \- answering. "Not beyond things you'd already know about, cadet."

Gamora and Peter exchanged a look.

Peter'd been brought to the shatterdome young enough- Meredith hadn't been willing to leave him behind with her father, and while she could have left during the nights to be at home with him, she always felt better staying- that he'd grown up calling and thinking of the former ranger as Starhawk. It had never occurred to his child self to question it, or even to think it was a little weird.

Even when he'd overhear other corps members talking about them and how it was a death wish to call the LOCENT officer by "Stakar" and even worse to use "Ogord", he'd still never questioned it.

Now, though, seeing the way Martinex's posture has completely shifted, he does. Martinex was pretty see-through when he was being duplicitous in the moment, and right now…

(Some people Peter overheard said that Starhawk hadn't had kaiju blue eyes until  _ after  _ the  _ Starward Hawk _ was destroyed.

Peter had never thought they looked like the indigo sludge K-Science kept in tubes and jars for study.

He'd always thought they looked like the drift control displays, the color that glowed off the screens and reflected off the bulletproof glass. The kind that were pretty much the backdrop to his childhood, following his mom around. It was a comforting color.)

"Marty. You know something." Peter suddenly remembered that Martinex had worked for the PPDC before even his mother had been assigned here, and that he had always been close to Starhawk. "You know about the  _ Starward _ ."

Martinex sighed, and the fight seemed to go out of him. “He’s not going to let this go, is he?” 

Gamora shook her head. “No. And neither will I.”

* * *

All of the  _ Starward Hawk's _ records were sealed to the highest clearances. 

Not even the  _ Lupine Elector _ had records that tightly controlled, and Peter had just found out last week that the two former rangers now dealt in the black market of kaiju bits. No one seemed surprised by that when he went around trying to find  _ someone _ with a normal reaction. All he’d gotten were groans and a general sense that the former rangers were seen as cowards for leaving the program, but not shock at the PPDC buying black market beastie bits for the labs. 

But the  _ Starward _ … no one talked about it. No one. The only people at the Shatterdome that likely had access were Starhawk themself, and Martinex.  _ Maybe _ J-Tech, if only for redacted records of the incident report.

Now, Peter and Gamora watched as Martinex unsealed them, a grim and hard set to his face as he plugged in his LOCENT code. 

"Look, kids, I'm only showing you this because… well, I'll be honest- Starhawk and Meredith have been trying to scare you out of the ranger program. And if this won't do it, nothing will." Martinex sighed, hand hovering over the controls for a moment. Peter started to wonder if he should tell Martinex to forget it. "And either way… please don't go asking them about this. It's… it would be cruel."

The file seemed to primarily contain log recordings of both cameras lodged in the  _ Starward _ and in the Shatterdome, and recordings of the transmissions between LOCENT and the  _ Starward _ and another labeled simply as "EMERGENCY BROADCAST EXPUNGED" where there was no registered file data.

The rest was about a dozen medical dockets of varying sizes. 

* * *

The worst part was the screaming.

Metal on metal, human, the kaiju in its death throws in the end. The panicked LOCENT operators.

Peter knew everyone who worked at the shatterdome well enough to pick out particular people.

It was all  _ screaming. _

* * *

"Official termination report says one ranger recovered by way of pilot emergency pod, and the other killed in combat, assumed cause being… incineration by the  _ Starhawk _ 's destruction." Martinex said quietly. The man looked like he'd aged at least a decade watching the records, haunted and like the warm, careful optimism he wore had been chiseled away like chalk. 

The worst part was Peter suddenly realized that Martinex had already  _ known _ about this. Martinex had worked in LOCENT managing drifts before his mom had been accepted into J-Tech. 

And Martinex shared a room  _ with _ Starhawk.

Peter swallowed. His own mouth felt dry as the soot that had swirled around the downed Jaeger. "And unofficially?"

"Most of the personnel who knew anything about it are split. About half think they're just hollowed out, like other pilots who've been through combat like that." Martinex locked the files again and powered the system down to cycle a new session, apparently nervous enough at the idea of being caught to bother. "The rest… we know better than that. They buried her 'body', sure, but the rest… the important stuff… that's never left. They singular became they plural, and all that. Something to do with how the jaeger came apart and kaiju blood and a RABBIT or something. I don’t know- no one really knows  _ why _ ."

“Is that… is that why everyone seems to be scared of them? Either handles them with gloves or avoids them?” Peter asked, quietly. 

"It's- hard. For anyone to understand." Martinex licked his lips, sighing. "I'm the only one now who knew either of them better than just a coworker that's left. Everyone else… I can't blame them for leaving. But I had to stay. "

Peter and Gamora looked at each other. She looked a little pale and definitely shocked, but she also looked  _ determined _ . She nodded.

"You kids aren't going to stop, are you? Figured as much." Martinex shook his head and tisked at them. "Well, I'll tell Merry I think you'll do good on it, even if I don't like it."

* * *

The next day, the announcement comes through that Marshall Astro was going to be visiting, with a new pilot- one who had recently been matched with  _ both _ of their rookies. That hadn’t happened in…

Well.  _ Ever _ .

But apparently Richard Rider was the best candidate Astro had trained for a while, and J-Tech had said it would be easy to modify the still being finished Jaeger that would be moved to their shatterdome to fit three pilots.

Peter, though. 

He wasn’t so sure.

"I don't  _ get it _ !" Peter scowled at the crates in the J-Tech storage room and kicked at one. "Why are they making us add a new guy?"

Gamora was sitting on another stack of disused Jaeger parts. "I'd imagine it probably is helping them let us go into the field anyway. Between whatever is up with you in the drift and our parents… they probably just want us to be as safe as possible. And if he matches up with us, he matches.

"I guess." Peter let his shoulders drop a little, huffing. After a minute, he said, "I guess he's kind of hot though."

Gamora laughed. "I guess he is."

* * *

Martinex wasn’t sure who had let the most notorious of Knowhere’s bone dealers into his base, but he was considering how hard it would be to figure it out and get them discharged from the Jaeger program. 

But regardless, Yondu was  _ here _ , and he was  _ following _ Martinex.

He wished he wasn’t on duty so he could just go to his and Starhawk’s quarters and lock himself in. 

“Ugh, Yondu, what do you actually  _ want? _ We have a new Jaeger coming in at seven hundred tomorrow and rookies taking it for the first spin, I don’t have time to dedicate to you.” Martinex sent Yondu his best withering scowl. 

“Look, Marty, I need-” Yondu sighed and pinched his nose, “I need to talk to. Y’know.  _ Them _ .”

“Thought you and Starhawk weren’t on speaking terms.” Martinex gave up trying to scowl Yondu away and just focused on the folder he was carrying- schedules and timestamps for tomorrow. It was planned to the near second.

_ Everyone _ was nervous- Meredith most of all, and he counted himself a close second. He might’ve been the head of the drift, but ever since the  _ Starward _ ’s demise, he always got jumpy and nervous about any drift time. 

He always felt like he was walking a tightrope and one gust from losing his pilots. 

The text started blurring and he bit back a curse. 

“Marty, I’m  _ serious _ . Would I have come back here if I wasn’t?`” Yondu snatched the folder and Martinex resisted the urge to shove at him. “Would I be talking to  _ you _ if I wasn’t absolutely sure they needed to hear it?”

“ _ Fine _ .” Martinex grit his teeth. And there was the other reason he felt like he was living on a knife edge: he knew that everyone who didn’t look at him and see the poor bastard walking around as the last intact survivor of the 3000-class pilot program, looked at him and saw the man partially  _ responsible _ .

“I’ll give you clearance to enter LOCENT; but if they tell you to fuck off, then you fuck off.” Martinex pointed his keycard at him, glaring.

“Fine.” Yondu offered him the folder back.

This was going to be a  _ long _ day.

  
  



End file.
